e time. I believe a real _staccato_ is inborn; a knack. I used
to grumble about it to Joachim and he told me once that musically
_staccato_ did not have much value. His own, by the way, was very
labored and heavy. He admitted that he had none. Wieniawski had such a
wonderful _staccato_ that one finds much of it in his music. When I
first began to play his D minor concerto I simply made up my mind to get
a _staccato_. It came in time, by sheer force of will. After that I had
no trouble. An artistic _staccato_ should, like the trill, be plastic
and under control; for different schools of composition demand
different styles of treatment of such details.

"Octaves--the unison, not broken--I did not find difficult; but though
they are supposed to add volume of tone they sound hideous to me. I have
used them in certain passages of my arrangement of 'Deep River,' but
when I heard them played, promised myself I would never repeat the
experiment. Wilhelmj has committed even a worse crime in taste by
putting six long bars of Schubert's lovely _Ave Maria_ in octaves. Of
course they represent skill; but I think they are only justified in show
pieces. Harmonics I always found easy; though whether they ring out as
they should always depends more or less on atmospheric conditions, the
strings and the amount of rosin on the bow. On the concert stage if the
player stands in a draught the harmonics are sometimes husky.

THE AMERICAN WOMAN VIOLINIST AND
AMERICAN MUSIC

"The old days of virtuoso 'tricks' have passed--I should like to hope
forever. Not that some of the old type virtuosos were not fine players.
Remenyi played beautifully. So did Ole Bull. I remember one favorite
trick of the latter's, for instance, which would hardly pass muster
to-day. I have seen him draw out a long _pp_, the audience listening
breathlessly, while he drew his bow way beyond the string, and then
looked innocently at the point of the bow, as though wondering where the
tone had vanished. It invariably brought down the house.

"Yet an artist must be a virtuoso in the modern sense to do his full
duty. And here in America that duty is to help those who are groping for
something higher and better musically; to help without rebuffing them.
When I first began my career as a concert violinist I did pioneer work
for the cause of the American woman violinist, going on with the work
begun by Mme. Camilla Urso. A strong